Mom Doth Murder Sleep

by James Yaffe

  I was just in time to see Roger go through the door into the theatre. He was alone. X must be waiting for him inside.

  I flattened myself into the doorway of a hardware store on the corner, where the streetlight couldn’t reach me, and settled in for a long wait.

  When I first got into police work, all those many years ago, this was the part of the job I really hated. Surveillance, stakeouts, whatever fancy name you gave it, it amounted to standing around and doing nothing for hours at a stretch. It was hard enough on your feet, but the real strain was on your psyche. What the hell do you think about when you have to stay in one place for hours and do nothing? Especially if you’re the type that hates to be alone with your thoughts.

  So I stood and waited now, watching the dark doorway of the Ramon Novarro Theatre, keeping myself numb but not exactly unconscious.

  When the disturbance occurred, I came to life instantly.

  A thick black cloud of smoke was suddenly coughing out from a window close to the sidewalk on the side of the building. I started running as fast as I could across the street. I’m not in as good a shape as I’d like to be. I jog on the weekends, and do some exercising every morning, only on some weekends I’m too busy and on some mornings I oversleep. So I could feel the aching in my legs and thighs and my breath coming in heavy, painful snorts. But the question pounding through my head was louder and stronger than all that: What kind of trouble had that kid got himself into?

  I got to the front door and grabbed the handle, expecting it to be hot to the touch, considering all the smoke that was now belching out from the window. But the handle wasn’t even lukewarm, and as soon as I turned it, the door opened easily. Inside, in the outer corridor where my ticket had been taken on opening night, the smell of smoke was stronger than ever. But still no sign of any fire.

  I went through one of the doors to the auditorium. It was very dimly lit. After blinking a little I could just about make out the rows of seats stretched out before me, and nobody was in any of them.

  Then I looked up at the stage and saw where both the smoke and the light were coming from. A light bulb was hanging down by its wire from the ceiling. It was lit, but obscured by the smoke curling around it. The smoke, thick black billows of it, seemed to be coming up from the floor.

  I put a handkerchief over my mouth and climbed up on the stage. Then I lowered my head and charged through the wall of smoke like a fullback pushing those last few inches for a touchdown. It was a crazy thing to do, but my luck held beautifully. I found myself on the other side of the smoke cloud, standing in the wings. I started yelling Roger’s name and running through the backstage area. The light didn’t reach there, and I stumbled around until my eyes got used to the darkness. Still no sign of Roger. I clumped down the stairs to the basement like a meshugene lunatic—to use Mom’s phrase when anybody behaves in a more than normally irrational way—and as soon as I got to the basement corridor I was engulfed again by smoke. It made me cough, but it didn’t seem to be searing my throat, the way smoke from a raging fire was supposed to do. It wasn’t killing me, it was just being a damned nuisance.

  Then I saw where it was coming from. Some kind of box or bag or something, hard to tell its exact color or shape or size in the darkness. It was fastened to one of the walls in an alcove that jutted off from the corridor. This alcove was located, as Roger had explained to me on the night of the murder, just under the trapdoor that opened onto the stage. Actors, before they made an entrance through the trapdoor, waited in this alcove for their cue. A row of steps was built into the wall so they could climb up to the stage.

  At that moment I heard this muffled but steady banging noise. Somebody was banging on a door somewhere. I ran along the corridor until I found it, the door to that same broom closet where Harold Hapgood had been stowed on the night of the murder.

  And there was Hapgood himself. Lying on the floor in front of this door. He had the kind of expression on his face that living human beings just can’t seem to manage. That’s why actors are hardly ever convincing when they play dead.

  I tried the broom closet door. It wasn’t locked. It came open with one yank, and the first thing I saw was Roger on his knees. His face was smudged, his hair was a mess, one side of his shirt collar was torn, it looked as if somebody had thrown him in here none too gently.

  “God damn it,” I shouted at him, “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?”

  He looked up at me, grinning feebly, a little gray around the eyes and mouth. “Did you see him?” he said, in a hoarse voice, and then the words trailed off in a fit of coughing.

  “Who?”

  “The one who clobbered me. The one who killed Harold.”

  “I’ve been watching the front entrance since you came in here,” I said. “I would’ve seen anybody who—son of a bitch!”

  I left Roger right there on the floor—he didn’t look as if he was in very good shape, but what else could I do?—and made my famous short dash up the basement steps again. And then to the backstage doors that led to the alley.

  Sure enough, one of those doors was swinging wide open.

  I went back downstairs to Roger, who had managed by this time to get to his feet. He was staring down at Hapgood’s body, and steadying himself against the inside of the door. “My God, he killed—he—” He choked a little.

  “Whoever it was got away,” I said. “While I was running around in circles looking for you—”

  “I’m sorry,” Roger said.

  I peered into his face, and I could see he wasn’t making a joke. He was looking genuinely ashamed as if I’d been accusing him of screwing up on the job.

  I told myself I should say some words of encouragement to him. Something to let him know that I didn’t blame him for the bad luck, that his life was more important to me than catching any criminal.

  “If you’re okay,” I said, “I’ll call the cops and the fire department. And before any of them get here, you’re giving me your report. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out, no matter how trivial. By this time you know how to give a report, don’t you?”

  * * *

  While we waited for the cops, I helped Roger up the stairs and eased him into one of the chairs in the wings.

  He was safe, all right, but he was looking positively awful. I told him he was within his rights to claim he was feeling too rotten to be questioned, but he said he’d rather get the third degree over with. He might be suffering from the great granddaddy of all headaches, but he still didn’t want to miss any of the action.

  The first wave was uniformed cops. They took us through our story, making us repeat parts of it three or four times. I could see Roger getting paler. With the second wave, the plainclothesmen, came the medical examiner. He was there to look at Hapgood’s body, but I got him to check Roger out first and make sure he had no concussions or broken bones. If I hadn’t done this, Mom would have killed me.

  The third and last wave was led by Assistant District Attorney Leland Grantley, who showed up in a tuxedo. He’d heard the news of the murder at a fund-raising dinner for District Attorney Marvin McBride’s re-election campaign next year, and he’d rushed right off, in the middle of the baron of beef, to do his duty. I could imagine how eager McBride had been to grab this opportunity to impress potential givers with the efficiency and dedication of his staff. Selfless servants of the people who gladly put their duty above baron of beef and probably wouldn’t get back in time for the strawberry shortcake.

  From Grantley, though he thought he was pumping us, I found out a lot of things I was glad to know.

  Hapgood had been stabbed in the back two or three times with the same kind of heavy-duty kitchen knife that had been used to kill Osborn. The knife had been left on the floor of the broom closet right next to the dead body, and it had a rubber handle that wouldn’t take fingerprints.

  Also, Hapgood had been killed up on the stage, after which the dead body, along with Roger’s uncon
scious one, had been lowered down to the basement through the trapdoor and stowed away in the broom closet. A bloody trail showed pretty clearly what had happened.

  Also, the smoke hadn’t been caused by a fire at all. It had been caused by something known as Smokey the Bomb, a device you could buy in a hundred toy- or novelty stores. It looked like a plain black box; a tube came out of it that connected to a door or a piece of furniture; if that door was opened or that piece of furniture moved, Smokey would be activated and cough out an impressive quantity of black crap. Harmless enough, but definitely frightening. This one had been placed on the wall of the basement alcove and hooked up to the trapdoor right above.

  Also, the police forensic experts, having picked up fingerprints from every conceivable surface around the theatre, hadn’t come up with any that gave them a lead to the killer. Not surprising, since dozens of people, including all our hottest suspects, had been in and out of the place dozens of times in the last four weeks.

  And there was one final piece of information that Grantley obligingly passed on to Roger and me. For the last half hour police officers had been putting in phone calls to everybody more or less connected to the Martin Osborn murder, trying to establish who was where while Hapgood was getting killed. The results, as I would have predicted, were inconclusive: every phone got answered, all the suspects had stories that didn’t clear them but didn’t incriminate them either.

  Lloyd Cunningham had been out at the movies; he’d just got back to his apartment when the phone rang. And no, his wife had a headache tonight, so he’d gone to the movies by himself.

  Laurie Franz had been alone in her off-campus house; her father, in his room at the Richelieu Hotel. Room service had brought him his dinner on a wheeled tray, with instructions not to pick it up again until he rang, which he hadn’t yet done by the time the police called. He had been working on scripts, he said.

  Randolph Le Sage had been alone in Osborn’s apartment, watching TV. He hadn’t vacated it yet, though it did make him feel rather odd, he said, as if he were rooming with a ghost. He offered to describe the TV shows he had seen in detail, but nobody bothered to listen, since Osborn had a VCR, and Le Sage could have taped those shows and looked at them when he got back from committing murder.

  Finally, putting on an earnest Ivy-League look, Grantley said, “It’s my duty to tell you fellows something. I’ll call Ann in the morning, and make it official. Subject to Marvin’s permission, of course, I intend to ask the judge to cancel your client’s bail and remand her to jail until the trial.”

  “Why would you do that, for God’s sake?” I said.

  “I’ve got no alternative. It’s obvious she killed Hapgood, isn’t it? He let it drop that he remembered about her perfume. He said it himself, didn’t he, that he’d been careless and blurted it out to the wrong person? Maybe to her ex-husband Bernie Michaels, who then passed it on to Sally. Anyway, she knew his testimony would clinch the case against her, so she followed him down here—”

  “You’re saying she doesn’t have an alibi for tonight?”

  Grantley’s little smile was polite but pleased with itself. “She’s one of the people we phoned, of course. She answered the phone and told me she was just finishing her dinner. She said she’d been there with Bernie for a few hours.”

  “Well, there you are!”

  The polite little smile turned into a polite little laugh. “Come on, Dave. You know as well as I do how Bernie Michaels feels about that woman. He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment about perjuring himself to save her skin.”

  In other words, Hapgood’s murder made the case against Sally Michaels stronger than ever. So it may seem strange that I picked that moment to tell Roger to come out with his information about Sally’s ring. It was a close decision, but it seemed to me that it was too risky for Roger to keep this to himself any longer. If he waited till tomorrow, Grantley would come down on him hard for not mentioning it tonight.

  “Excuse me,” said Grantley, after Roger had told his story, “but why didn’t you see fit to share this evidence with the district attorney’s office much earlier?”

  “I didn’t remember it until a few hours ago,” Roger said. “And I didn’t want to disturb you in your home on a Saturday.”

  Roger said all this without the smallest crack in his voice or blinking of his eyes. I was proud of him. Slowly but surely he was learning his trade.

  “Now how about letting us go,” I said to Grantley. “You’ve heard all we have to say, and Roger has had a rough time. I don’t want him collapsing on me.”

  “Very well,” Grantley said, “the two of you are excused. For now.”

  We hurried out to the street in front of the theatre, and I saw Roger swaying a little. “You’re in no condition to drive a car,” I said. “Also you’re in no condition to take care of yourself tonight. I’m taking you in my car, we’ll pick up yours in the morning. We’re driving to Mom’s house, and you’ll stay the night with her.”

  “I don’t want to impose—”

  “Don’t be stupid. You’ll be doing her a big favor. You know how long it’s been since she had a helpless boy in her clutches? Your job is to keep her from drowning you in chicken soup.”

  * * *

  We drove across town together, neither of us having much to say. Mesa Grande, as it flashed by me through the windshield, somehow didn’t look real tonight. I looked at the storefronts, dark and deserted, or with dim yellow lights in their windows; at the houses plunged in blackness except for the glow of their front-porch bulbs; and I found myself feeling the absolute conviction that behind these storefronts and these lighted porches was nothing. Nothing at all. They were stage sets. They had no depth to them. If you opened the doors and walked through, you’d find yourself on the street at the other side.

  My life wasn’t real either, I thought. I was frittering it away on things that didn’t exist. Dignity, respect, professional pride, God knows what other foolishness! Only in plays and movies did anybody give a damn about such things.

  I stole a glance at the haggard-looking, white-faced boy at my side. I’ve never had a son—or any other children of my own. I don’t actually know what it feels like when you’re faced with the possibility of losing one. But I couldn’t imagine it feeling any worse than I had felt that moment when I looked down at this kid lying on the floor, with blood all around him.

  In the real world, I thought, in this world of liars and thieves and murderers, what matters is friendship, family, love. People who care for each other. Things that don’t fade away or change shape on you in the blink of an eye.

  I pulled the car up at Mom’s house. I wasn’t worried that I’d be disturbing her at this late hour. I knew she wouldn’t go to bed until she heard all about Roger’s expedition.

  Sure enough, all the lights were on, and she greeted us at the door with a big warm smile. Then she saw what Roger looked like, and while I told her everything that had happened since we left her, she fussed over him, felt his forehead for a fever, and plunked hot tea in front of him and ordered him to swallow it down.

  He sipped, and some of the color came back to his cheeks. I watched from across the kitchen table and I suddenly felt the urge to do something crazy. I spoke up quickly, before I could back off from that urge.

  “Mom and I are going to talk about the case now,” I said, facing the kid, keeping my voice calm and steady. “You probably figured out already that I talk about all my tough cases with Mom. She solves them for me, she sees things I could never see for myself.”

  So it was out. I leaned back in my chair. I was sweating a little, but also feeling lighter and more comfortable than I had felt in weeks.

  “I didn’t know that,” Roger said. “I sure would like to hear what the two of you have to say about this case.”

  For a moment I had a twinge of disappointment. Where was his look of amazement? Where was the astonished gasp, the embarrassed stammering? I should’ve been glad, I suppose, that he
wasn’t making a big deal out of my revelation. But at least he might have made some kind of deal out of it.

  Then I saw Mom giving me one of her most approving beams, and my disappointment went away.

  “All right, we’ll talk a little bit,” Mom said. “But as soon as I give the word, this boy is going upstairs to bed. And believe me, I don’t take no for answers.”

  Roger agreed to these conditions, and Mom turned to me. “So how about a nice cup of tea for you too, Davie? And also a piece schnecken?”

  “I can take it or leave it, Mom.”

  “You better take it. You’ll need your strength and your brainpower. We got a lot to talk about tonight.”

  I recognized the glitter in her eyes, and I felt my heart beating a little faster. “You know who the murderer is? You’ve got the answer?”

  In spite of his exhaustion, I could tell that Roger’s heart was beating faster too.

  “I’ve got the question. Sometimes that’s more important.”

  “What question? You’re deliberately being mysterious, you know how that drives me up the wall.”

  “Excuse me. I don’t want you driving up walls, you could have a bad accident. All I’m trying to say to you is, think about what happened in the theatre tonight. Don’t it jump right out at you, the big question? For some reason this murderer wants to kill Harold Hapgood. Maybe so he won’t testify about the perfume, maybe for some other reason. Whatever it is, this no-good creeps up behind you, Roger, hits you on the head so you won’t see who it is, and stabs this Hapgood in the back. Then he takes the unconscious body and the dead body, and lowers them into the basement through the trapdoor and locks up the live one in the broom closet.”

  “The big question being,” I broke in, “why would the murderer go to so much trouble and risk? Why not just leave them on the stage and get the hell out of there?”